Sustainable Business Learning Community Conversations, January 2016 - February 2016

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Sustainable Business Conversation, January 12, 2017 Topic: Education/Vocational Ed in Detroit

What are we teaching the next generation?

How do we prepare the next generation to be thoughtful?

Schools should teach us to think and ask questions, but it seems that education frequently just promotes lowest price and immediate utility.

Education should make people think about their purchasing choices. Is it profitable to educate people to think deeply about consumer choices? Some of us have been dismayed to visit Walmart and find hardly anything that’s made in the US. There can be issues with pollution and human rights in manufacturing plants in other countries.

We need to look deeply at what the purpose of education is:

  • What would schools look like if they were designed to promote critical thinking skills and problem solving skills?
  • Education now focuses on standardized tests and not on encouraging critical thinking.
  • Sometimes we seem to be creating robotic thinkers.
  • Students should learn how to recognize and name a problem.

The ideal school would be both local and global. Culture strongly affects education.

  • Japanese students are very different from American students, some differences are good (focus and discipline) and some differences are bad (high stress cram exams).
  • In the US our kids do exactly what we tell them to do: look for instant gratification and upward mobility, be a consumer and think more of the individual rather than themselves as part of a wider society.

There were once a number of Detroit high schools with strong vocational education programs; Chadsey, Cass Tech. Now we try to put everyone on a path to college- but that may not be right for everyone.

Boggs School is thinking about having a vocational place for high school students after school. There could be programs in green construction, agriculture, cooking and sewing. The goal is to provide tools to reach ambitious goals and live meaningful lives.

Every option should be open and valued – not just college education.

Are students being educated to the reality of their lives – or about how to do well on tests?

Working on your passion creates flow – the work needs to be not too easy but not too hard. Kids at Boggs School love their passion projects every Friday and work hard across grade levels.

Teachers can measure growth in their students – it’s not necessary to have grades and test scores.

Too many teachers have become drained and are leaving the profession. Students in teacher training programs are way down.

Every child innately wants to learn. What’s wrong with the bureaucracy that’s changing education?